Immigration Blog

In his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump explained the United States' approach to the current refugee crisis:

A new book offers the most comprehensive and detailed account yet of three decades of failed workplace enforcement to weaken the magnet of jobs that pull illegal immigrants to the United States.

Back in May, I wrote about the positive effect that President Trump's rhetoric was having on immigration enforcement, and in particular on dissuading aliens from entering illegally along the Southwest border.

That effect appears to be waning, however, at least to a degree.

Alabama's new and embattled senator, Luther Strange (R), who faces a tough primary election on Tuesday, September 26, owns a large chunk of an EB-5 regional center. These centers are U.S.-based and Department of Homeland Security-licensed, and play a middleman role between aliens essentially buying visas, and U.S. real estate developers who use the investments.

Sometimes the Trump administration's immigration policy moves are as subtle as a baseball bat, but this past week the State Department produced as delicately nuanced a set of threats as a tapestry artist might have imagined.

Reports that ICE may be accessing Utah Department of Motor Vehicle records to target illegal aliens who have obtained a Utah driving privilege card have come as a shock to many advocates.

The immigrant-investor (EB-5) program continues to attract sharpsters of all kinds, as we have noted in the past.

The most recent example is Dr. Jack Michel, the owner of the rehabilitation facility in Hollywood, Fla., where eight people died in the aftermath of Irma; died of the heat, apparently, because they were bed-ridden in a building without a backup generator.

Maybe all of this is a wild coincidence, and maybe there's a bland explanation for it, but please note these two different governmental decisions:

The last major immigration legislation occurred in May 2005, with the passage of "The REAL ID Act", Pub. L. 109-13 (2005). It should be noted as an aside that "REAL ID" is not an acronym, and therefore it is not clear to me why it is in capital letters. Despite the fact that I drafted major portions of it as well as most of the conference report as it related to that bill, I did not get to name it. That act should provide important insight into how the DACA dance will go.

Following the lead of the University of California (UC), the State of California, joined by the States of Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota, filed a Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for DHS's rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The 36-page complaint contains many interesting takeaways, few of which relate to the legal arguments therein.